That Time of the Year

 

FCC Reminder

 

Amateur & Personal Radio Users Reminded Not to Use Radios in Crimes

• Full Title: Warning: Amateur and Personal Radio Services Licensees and Operators May Not Use Radio Equipment to Commit or Facilitate Criminal Acts
• Document Type(s): Public Notice
• Bureau(s): Enforcement

Description:
The FCC Enforcement Bureau issued today an advisory to remind licensees and operators in the Amateur and Personal Radio Services that they may not use radio equipment to commit or facilitate crimes.

• DA/FCC #: DA-21-73

The ARRL has posted the full text here. 

To clarify: The Personal Radio Service includes the cheap blister-pack FRS radios you can buy on the end cap at Wally World, the slightly more expensive and maybe slightly higher quality GMRS radios you have to actually look for. FRS radios require no license, GMRS radios do, but its a blanket; you, as owner, buy a license and it covers all the units you own, and whoever you allow to use one.

The Amateur Radio Service is, well, amateur radio operators. You have to take a test to get the license. As such, any licensed ham KNOWS you can't use any of these devices in the commission of a crime. 

So why now? Well, one might suggest that this is too little to late.

For about 10 years now you have been able to buy extremely cheap, Chicom made, handheld radios on Amazon. And when I say "extremely cheap", I mean that they cost a little more than that blister-pack pair of FRS radios. 

Also, while they transmit on the frequency you program in, they signal is very "dirty", with what are technically referred to as "spurious transmissions" or "spatter." In fact, bench testing indicates that most of these Chicom units, sometimes called "Kaodungs"as a mocking form of the names of many of these. (They're Chinese. They come from the same factories, made by the same slave labor, sold with different brand names. Or aliases, take your pick)

They are also problematic because they come off the boat able to transmit on many bands which it is illegal to transmit on in the USA without the appropriate licensing. And I am not talking about amateur bands, either. No, I'm talking about bands that are reserved for commercial or government or public safety use. Bands that you can get severe fines or jail time for transmitting on. 

Now, for decades it has been generally accepted that amateur radio operators will acquire radios that operate on any mode or frequency range and modify them to operate where they have operating privileges. And it is not illegal to own a radio you don't have the license to transmit on, as long as... you don't transmit.

And it is legal to use any communications means at hand if life safety is at risk. (Although there's a story about a ham who called for help on a public safety frequency, and got the help and arrested for "interfering with public safety" or some-such, so use with caution.)

ARRL has tested these "Kaodung" units, and like I said above, they have very messy, very bad signals. In fact, they probably do not meet Federal standards for use. Uncle Sam has been trying to stop the influx, to no avail. 

Sometime in the last few months I heard that antifa was using these things to coordinate their mostly peaceful protests. 

I almost titled this post "Too little, too late."

(See also my post "Hammy Stuff" from October 2018.)

Happy Thanksgiving!

Me, I'm off to work. Working tomorrow, too, but probably just half a day.

In the meantime, based on my inbox, it looks like Friday comes on Thursday this week, so I'll go ahead and post tomorrow's meme today.

(For anyone who doesn't get that,see last year's post "Darmok".)

Can I tell you what I want?

What I really really want?

I want a handheld¹ dual band² transceiver³ that has bluetooth and an Android/iPhone control app so I can program it that way.

The problem with most amateur radios these days is that they have so many functions that programming them practically requires a computer science degree, not to mention a bewildering variety of ways to scroll through functions, depending on manufacturer and model. 

Using the cell phone to control it would also let you store a heckuva lot more repeater setups. (I.e, if the radio only stores 100 entries, well, there are more like 200 different repeaters in Western Washington on 2m alone, let alone 1.25m, 70cm, 6m...

If I could just download the databases for Western Washington, along with Eastern WA, OR, ID, etc., into the phone, I could select individual entries that I needed, and adjust as I moved.

Oh, and please make it for under two Benjamins, 'cuz I'm a cheapskate.


Footnotes for the non-radio active:
1. Handy-talkie, or HT to Amateur radio operators. In WWII, the handheld was a "Handy-Talkie", the "Walkie-Talky" was a backpack monstrosity.
2. 2m and 70cm, by preference.\
3. "Radio."

Kil't in the streetz!

So the emergency communications team meeting was canceled this evening, so Mrs. Drang and I decided to go out to eat.

We went to Red Robin, because it's close, fairly cheap, and good. (Unless maybe you ask our doctor, so don't.)

As we sat down I glanced at my new watch (Garmin Forerunner 235, birthday present) and realized it was missing an icon or two. I scrolled through the displays and realized that it was linked with my cell phone...

...which I didn't have on me.

Mrs. Drang admitted hers was still on the charger in the living room.

Amazing that the resulting lack of wider situational awareness didn't result in our not knowing about an Alien Invasion or Sasquatch Uprising something and getting killed on our way home.

At least we're able to maintain eye contact and converse.

Some these days would probably prefer to face an alien invasion in the middle of a Sasquatch uprising...

Merry Christmas!

#ChristmasEve Prayer from #Apollo8 pic.twitter.com/Wjf9XZfy72

— Buzz Aldrin (@TheRealBuzz) December 25, 2018

{Note: Depending on your browser setting, you may have to click on the link - the part that starts with "pic.twitter" -- or the date in the post to see the Tweet. Sorry about that.}

This guy should get a Nobel Prize

And/or a Medal of Freedom.

Something.

I love his line about "over-engineering revenge."

NASA. Get it? Space?

Oh, dear

Warning: Science and math, presented with a rather heavy Ukrainian accent. Mind you, she does a good job of making some pretty esoteric science understandable to the layperson, but some might be intimidated by the very concepts. (One might be tempted to turn on closed captioning, due to her accent. It might help, but I think they used a speech-to-text app, and it gets thrown off by homophones which aren't valid, due to... her accent.)

So that's an hour and a half of in-depth discussion of solar activity, including helioseismicity, sun spots, the corona, poloidal and toroidal magnetic fields...

... the gist of which is that Dr. Zharkova says that not only is the current (imminent, actually) sun spot cycle (25) going to be even lighter than the previous one (24, just ended), but she says that we are headed into a 30+ year Grand Minimum. (A sun spot cycle is usually about 11 years long, by the way.)

Can you say "Maunder"?

No solar activity means amateur radio continues to have poor propagation on the High Frequency bands, but, like the old George Carlin routine, it also means a mini-ice age, so I wouldn't sweat the propagation. As KB6NU points out in the blog post where I learned of this presentation, satellites are a workable alternative. (Yes, hams can and do use satellites. Yes they have their own issues.)

But, hey, at least that rig will be generating some heat...

...assuming there's power.


1. Solar minimum - Wikipedia. Political correctness leads Wikipedia to deny any correlation between solar minima and terrestrial climate.
2. I took a look at the effects of the Maunder Minimum in Quickie Book Review, The Global Crisis.
3. Homepage | NOAA / NWS Space Weather Prediction Center

“I Am An Adverb!”

So, there I was. 1980. Defense Language Institute, Presidio of Monterey, California. Basic Korean Course. (For “listeners”, AKA "geeks"; they had a separate course at the time for interrogators, AKA “rubber hosers.”)

Now, the recruiters had taken one look at my test scores and decided I should take the Defense Language Aptitude Battery, or DLAB. I had not done so well in Spanish classes in school, but they insisted, so I went ahead.

When I walked out of the room I felt like my brains were running out of my ears.

There were multiple portions to the test. One checked for general knowledge of foreign languages; I recall one where the sentence said “le poisson est sur la table”, and you had to select the correct drawing, which variously featured a fish and a bottle of poison on, under, and beside a table.

Another section used English vocabulary, but made-up grammar. As I recall, it actually was similar to what I would be learning in Korean: “The boy went to the store” might be rendered “’Boy-ga’ ‘store-ay’ ‘go-ed’”; The “ga” suffix attached to “boy” indicates the subject of the sentence, and the “ay” suffix on “store” indicates his destination. The verb comes at the end of the sentence, and instead of using “went” you use “go” with a past tense indicator. Both the test and the Korean language were/are a lot more complicated than that. As I recall, by the end of that section of the test we were reading paragraphs and answering (trying to answer) questions about who did what to whom.

"Darmok"

In my previous post, LOL of the Day, I shared a meme which, quite frankly, I knew a lot of people wouldn't get.

And that's OK. I even know some Star Trek fans who had forgotten the episode "Darmok".

Now, that particular episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation happens to be my favorite for several reasons.

A quick synopsis, for anyone not familiar with the episode:

• The Enterprise is dispatched to meet an alien race. 
• Picard is beamed off the ship as the aliens cast a "scattering field" which prevents Enterprises transporter from beaming Picard back up.
• Picard discovers that the intent of the alien captain is that he and Picard cooperate to fight a creature.
• Slowly, Picard realizes that the reason that the Federation has never been able to communicate with this alien race is that they only speak in allegory and metaphor; likewise, they find straightforward speech baffling.
• The alien captain dies, but Picard is now able to communicate with the aliens, so Everything's Fine.

How many Standard Star Trek Tropes did you spot in that executive summary of a synopsis?  (More at Darmok - Wikipedia and Star Trek One Trek Mind: Deciphering "Darmok".)

One of the reasons I like this episode is that it is one of the few examples of science fiction in media where there was an honest attempt to live up to SF's nickname "The Literature of Ideas." While any literature can be described as starting from the question "What if...?" -- "What if the teenage children of two feuding families of Verona fell in love and secretly married?" -- in Speculative Fiction the "What if?" gets to be (one might argue should be) more out of the ordinary.

In this case, "What if we met a race/culture that only communicated in metaphor and allegory?"

This is cool.

Mind you, it is also absurd, because, as is pointed out in the article "Deciphering 'Darmok'" I linked above,

Yet there's one annoying thing about “Darmok.” If the Tamarians only speak in these metaphors, how did they ever learn the words that later came to be used in the phrases? How did they know that walls fell around Shaka if they need a phrase to symbolize the word “wall?”

They had words for stuff, but they couldn't just use a word? They couldn't say "Here", meaning "take this", they had to say "Temba, his arms open"? How did they learn what "arm" or "arms" or "open" were? Or "his"?

Not to mention, how does a race that only speaks in metaphor develop the science and math needed to become a space-faring race?

My assumption has always been that there were certain ceremonial occasions on which it is an unbreachable imperative that one speak in these metaphors, not unlike a Vulcan's dedication to logic. We know Vulcans are actually susceptible to emotion and illogic, and that they must fight to maintain their control, so perhaps this alien outreach mission would be regarded as a failure if they didn't play by their own internal rules. ("Deciphering 'Darmok'" posits a race that is partially telepathic.)

Another thing I liked about the episode is that they routinely broke every other magic double-talk generator device on the show, but this is the only episode I remember where Universal Translator failed.

Given Roddenberry's known utopian vision for the future -- routinely ignored on the show, when it was convenient, but don't dare suggest to him that he was full of shit! -- he probably had some Chomskian notion of a "language organ"...

LOL of the Day

I didn't just LOL, I guffawed, right there in the Salt Mines.

Hammy Stuff

Procrastination -- it's been a month since I posted, and I haven't even been out of town! -- results in multiple posts, some of them short, being consolidated.

Part of the procrastination is due to disgust with The National Scene, ifyouknowwhatImeanandIthinkyoudo. Part of it is laziness and inertia, part waiting to see what will happen...

Anyway. The 98-Double-Ought-3 Amateur Radio Club celebrated its 20th Anniversary yesterday. Yay, us!🎆🎉 Yes, there was cake and ice cream. 🎂🍨

Now, there are bigger and older clubs out there; Western Washington is pretty "radio-active", so to speak. The Radio Club of Tacoma is over a hundred years old, and the club "radio shack" -- yes, hams really do use that term -- is an actual house that the club purchased 50 or 60 years ago. Which is pretty cool, and yes, there is a certain amount of envy there. But. It isn't our club, and it doesn't really serve our needs.

Speaking of which...

A Wikiwander

You'll probably spot a pattern here...

• Boeing B-52 Stratofortress - Wikipedia.
• Larson Air Force Base - Wikipedia
• Grant County International Airport - Wikipedia
• Alvin M. Johnston - Wikipedia. "Tex" Johnson is something of a folk hero in these parts.
• Curtis LeMay - Wikipedia, not so much...(Didn't know he was a ham. Apparently he logged Q's on operational flights! 😀)
• Boeing X-20 Dyna-Soar - Wikipedia
• North American XB-70 Valkyrie - Wikipedia Not a Boeing. Oh, well.
• Avro Vulcan - Wikipedia (Yes, that thing in the James Bond movie was real...) (Also, I find it ironic that in the '80s there were nibbles of foreign sales to... Argentina!)
• So, I wonder if it's reportable if a nation in the "the nuclear club" starts painting it's bombers Anti-flash white?
• North American A-5 Vigilante - Wikipedia
• 1962 United States Tri-Service aircraft designation system - Wikipedia(So the "next available number" for a "C"-mission type is... 47?)

In Ham Radio News

Tomorrow is Amateur Radio Field Day.

In what may be a first, the 9-8-Double-Ought-3 Amateur Radio Club plans to operate for 24 hours. This is what happens when a member offers the facilities at his place of employment as the Field Day site; previously, it had been at a park or on school property, closed at dark and with no rest rooms, etc., available after hours, or on church property and we had to clear out before Sunday Services. We even got listed in the local fish wrap!

The fact that we'll be set up on the grounds of a funeral home is irrelevant.

It's actually a nice facility, shaded ground, and they'll leave what I call the "support room" open for rest rooms, hot and cold running water, refrigerators for the cook out. Our Emergency Communications team has been meeting in the "Share Life" center, which is larger than the training room we'd been meeting in at the local fire station, which we had to vacate as it is being renovated.  This also gives us access to a better Internet and multi-media suite, for training presentations.

I was told that, in addition to the local paper we were also listed in one of the Seattle news outlets, but I haven't been able to find it.

In other geek news:

From the "Be careful What You Wish For" Department, several years ago we entered a period of reduced solar activity. Hams have been kvetching about how reduced solar activity means reduced (or utterly crappy) propagation. So the news of a new solar storm should have them dacning in their shacks, right?

Not so much. eHam.net reports: Solar Storm Hits Earth: Four Times Size of Earth Disables Radio Technology:

Solar storm hits Earth - storm FOUR times size of Earth disables radio technology | Science | News | Express.co.uk

A HUGE solar flare which was released from a hole in the Sun’s atmosphere temporarily left some radio frequencies disabled, scientists have revealed, and the storm is only getting bigger....

According to the website Space Weather: “During the past 24 hours, sunspot AR2715 has almost quadrupled in size, growing two dark cores larger than Earth.

“The active region is now crackling with low-level solar flares.

“A pulse of extreme ultraviolet radiation from the flare briefly ionised the top of Earth's atmosphere above the Pacific Ocean, causing a shortwave radio brownout at frequencies below 10 MHz.

“People who might have noticed the disturbance include mariners and ham radio operators.”

eHam serves as a news aggregator for Amateur radio-related news items; it also links to this ARRL news release about coming updates to ARES:

06/21/2018
As part of upgrades to the ARES® program, ARRL will phase out traditional hard-copy report forms later this year in favor of an online system, ARES® Connect — a new volunteer management, communication, and reporting system. The system, in beta testing since March in four ARRL sections with large ARES organizations, will allow ARES members to log information for ARRL Field Organization handling but does not change how ARES serves partner organizations. ARES training also is due for enhancement.

Paperless reporting is good, assuming the system works. You know, like in a disaster where the Internet may be down...

About that "enhanced training..."

Changes would encompass additional mandatory training to include ARRL Emergency Communications courses and the now-standard FEMA NIMS/ICS courses IS-100, 200, 700, 800, with IS-300 and 400 for higher levels. Other specialty training could include SKYWARN and agency-specific programs.
Training levels attained would dovetail with three new levels of ARES participation: Level One would be comprised of all entering the program with no training, while progressing through the ARRL emergency communications training and the FEMA Independent Study courses 100, 200, 700, and 800. Level Two would be attained upon successful completion of these courses, and would be considered the “Standard” level for ARES participants. Level Three would be attained upon completion of the advanced FEMA courses IS 300 and 400, which would qualify candidates for ARES leadership positions.
Level One participants would be able to fulfill most ARES duties, with a target of attaining Level Two in 1 year. Level Two, the standard participant level, would permit participant access to most incident sites and emergency operations centers (EOCs). Level Three would convey full access as granted by the authority having jurisdiction, plus qualification for ARES leadership.

Okay, fine.

But.

The "ARRL Emergency Communications courses" as they currently exist are a joke. They are online-only. As are the FEMA ICS classes required, and these are commonly acknowledged to be less than ideal as far as actually inculcating the knowledge. (Online training generally doesn't. Train, I mean, although it is handy for checking a block.)

As for the ARRL classes, you have to request to access them. (Fine.) Then they assign you a mentor -- and this is, notoriously, where the wheels come off. I have heard so many complaints about mentors being unavailable, unresponsive, or dismissive of attempts by their "mentees"* that I have concluded that, in this case at least, there's enough smoke to indicate that there's a three alarm dumpster fire and I won't bother.

 Which reminds me, I still need to post about the class I took last month, mentioned in my post I did not know that.


*Really a word: "Mentee." Merriam-Webster.com. Accessed June 22, 2018. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/mentee.

Photography Bleg

Just unearthed a box full of photographs going back to the mid-70s.

The oldest photos are from my Colorado Outward Bound experience in... '75?

These were taken with a Kodak 110 pocket camera, and not only are the prints faded (no surprise there) but the negatives have all taken on a green hue, which is present in the photos when I scan them with the negative/slide scanner Mrs. Drang got me for Christmas a year or two ago. Some of the 35mm negatives I have also need some color correction.

I'm looking for a reasonably priced software package that will allow me to restore these to normal colors, i.e., blue sky, white snow, instead of both being shades of green. Bonuses for being able to just click a button and have it be done...

Thanks in advance.

June 14th...

...is the US Army's Birthday.

Also Flag Day.

Photo ©2010 & 2018 Mrs. Drang & The Cluemeter.

I hear it's also President Trump's birthday, although TBH I don't generally celebrate the birthday of folks I don't know personally. (Note it, sure, but celebrate, no.)

Here are a few pics I just dug out of the archive:

Team Spirit, 1986:

Photo ©1986 & 2018 DW Drang & The Cluemeter.

My Motley Crew for Team Spirit 1986. 3 KATUSAs and two round eyes, on a mountain for two weeks. Part of why I laugh when I hear people speak nostalgically about MREs, or act like ramyun* is a gourmet delight...

Photo ©1986 & 2018 DW Drang & The Cluemeter.

I wish I could remember this guy's name, he was a Ground Surveillance Radar operator augmenting my team. Good guy, despite the (mostly) good-natured rivalry between the "Electronic Grunts" and us SIGINT Geeks.

Photo ©1987 & 2018 DW Drang & The Cluemeter.

Here I am, a year or so later at Ft. Ord, the 7th Infantry Division (Light) "Fight Light, Freeze at Night!"(I can pinpoint this as to date because I am wearing OD green "jungle fatigue" trousers, still authorized for field wear at the time. They got destroyed at the National Training Center soon after this.)

Photo ©1987 & 2018 DW Drang & The Cluemeter.

My buddy, Steve W. If you recognize him, have him drop me a line.

Photo ©1987 & 2018 DW Drang & The Cluemeter.

IIRC, Steve M. (on the left) and Dave J. (on the right.) No, that's not a duffel bag full of poagie bait, it's the 50+ pound direction finding antenna.

If The Steves and Dave look like drowned rats in these, it's because it was raining non-stop. We were supposed to be dropped in an airmobile insertion, move cross-country, and then get picked up. Somewhere in there, the skies opened up and the pick up got cancelled, and we spend a miserable night under poncho hooches. (Actually, IIRC, it was one big hooch and we pulled the Heinlein Starship Troopers thing where we huddled together...)

Photo ©1987 & 2018 DW Drang & The Cluemeter.

This is my ruck. There are many like it, but this one was mine. PRC77 radio with KY57 crypto device, a week's worth of batteries, MREs and water, poncho and poncho liner, and one change of socks.

≈125 pounds.

Tactical Hipsters can speak of their "woobie" like it's some sort of security blanket, but I spent too many nights freezing under one to get all misty-eyed.

Photo ©1987 & 2018 DW Drang & The Cluemeter.

Airmobile insertion, waiting for the bird to pull pitch...
 

Photo ©1987 & 2018 DW Drang & The Cluemeter.

All the pics (except the one at the top, taken by Mrs. Drang), were taken on film, before consumer-priced digital cameras were even science fiction. The ones from Ft Ord were taken with a Vivitar pocket 35mm, that just fits in a 20 round M16 magazine pouch. I'm pretty sure the ones from Korea were taken with a Nikon SLR, otherwise I couldn't have gotten that time-delay group pic. No idea what lens either camera had/has.





*Ramyen -- or "namyun" -- is Korean, Ramen is Japanese...

Note to Everybody

Inspired by Tam's post Copypasta from my Bookface wall...

Go ahead and unfriend me.

The only way I am going back to Facebook is if they change their rules to let one post using a pseudonym with your "legal ID" not publicly available, and not searchable, without a warrant.

I'd even be willing to pay a double sawbuck (that's a Jackson for you kids, AKA an Irony Note, until Harriet replaces Andy, at which time it will be a Freedom Note, I guess) per annum for the service.

Facebook can be a useful way to stay in touch with family and friends; people evacuating from Hurricane Harvey only need a couple of minutes to post to their wall "Safe in Dallas, more later" and everyone will know they made it out OK.

Google+ could do that much, too, and anyone who has an Android phone has a Google+ account by virtue of having an Android, AKA GMail, AKA Google, account. And Google+ does not demand you post your legal ID anywhere. (Ask me how I know...)

But Zuckerberg et. al. are more interested in making piles of money and in manipulating society than in providing a simple service that people would actually like.

So feel no guilt at all about trimming your friends list by one there.

BTW, I'm still on Twitter, as of this week. Not real active, compared to some, but posting a link to the blog posts will (or used to) cross-post to Facebook, and occasionally some SJW does or says something stupid...

LIVE Satellite feed of Hurricane Harvey

In case the feed here goes down, it is at this link: Hurricane Harvey LIVE video from NASA Goes 16 satellite - YouTube


Edit to add: View of Hurricane Harvey from the International Space Station:

I Did Not Know That -- Wikiwander

So, today turned out to be amazingly quiet at work, and I got everything I set out to do early. (The boss was out with the crud, maybe that helped.)

I looked something up on Wikipedia.

I never looked at Wikipedia Portals before.

I clicked on "History".

I did not know that August 23rd was the European Day of Remembrance for Victims of Stalinism and Nazi, observed in the US of A as "Black Ribbon Day." Take that, Antifa and Neo-Nazi creeps!

Then I clicked on "War."

I read about The military history of Canada.

I read about Isaac Brock, a separate article further down the page, although related. Of course, being from Detroit, I found the tone a little off-putting...

I read about the Krag-Petersson rifle and the Krag-Jørgensen rifle as well as a couple of other Norwegian rifles I never heard of.

I read about the Finnish Civil War, which I'd never heard of.

I read about Operation Downfall, which is a subject I know a bit about, but am always willing to look into, in case there's something new.

I read about the Polish–Soviet War and Władysław Sikorski and about Witold Pilecki, who volunteered to go to Auschwitz for the Polish Secret Army, through whom he reported on events there to the Allies.

I'm not saying I was reluctant to leave when my shift was done -- and I actually got a lot of the stuff I'm paid for done today -- but if I'm ever laid up in bed, my library card is expired, and my Kindle is broken, I think I'll survive a day or two on this sort of thing...

Product review, Detroit Holster "Hastings"

(Consider it a "First Impressions" review, with a follow-up to come, if you like...)

Some time ago I became aware of an outfit calling itself "Detroit Holster".

While not one of the Big Names in kydex benders, they have gotten good reviews, which intrigued me as a native of the Motor City.

As a native Detroiter, I confess to getting a bit of a kick from the fact that most of the holsters are named for significant Detroit roads: the 8 Mile (thank you, Slim Shady), the John R, the Dix, the Hastings...

When I signed up for Tom Givens' Combative Pistol class at the end of June, I decided that I needed an out-of-waistband holster for my Sig P320 Carry, with Streamlight TLR-1.¹

Most of the Big Name kydex benders are advertising a 6-8 week lead time, or more, whereas Detroit Holsters says

CURRENT LEAD IS APPROXIMATELY 2-4 WEEKS.  ** Most “8 Mile”, “Hastings”, “John R” and “MoTown”, models without light/laser are currently shipping in about 1 – 2 weeks **  

I placed my order for a Hastings OWB holster on Monday, May 15nd.

It arrived up on Friday, May  26th.  Note that the disclaimer says "without" light/laser, this was with.

With the Hastings, you have a choice between a paddle, and Tek-Lok; I went with the Tek-Lok, because I've seen paddle holsters come out on the draw²...

Holding the holster in my hands fit was very tight, enough so I was wondering if the draw would be awkward.

Based on 15 or 20 minutes of dry practice, draw and present, holster, repeat, the concern was not warranted. I'm hardly Mr Coordinated, so I'm sure the draw wasn't pretty, but I had no problems.³ With the Tek-Lok the holster does stick out far enough to be less than ideal for concealability, but that's what the Sub-Compact P320s are for.

I got black, out of some sort of frugality. They have lots of colors available. And patterns. Including The Colors and the Lone Star Flag. The gun is Flat Dark Earth, I probably should have spent the extra fin or sawbuck and gone with FDE or Coyote, but...

Pictures follow. Not sure what trick of the light caused the flat black holster appear to be brown in the pics...

Detroit Holster's Hastings OWB Holster.
©2017 DW Drang & The Cluemeter

Holster and gun.
©2017 DW Drang & The Cluemeter

Front view.
Like most holsters for light-bearing handguns, retention is on the light, and is pretty tight.
©2017 DW Drang & The Cluemeter

Back view of the Tek-Lok.
©2017 DW Drang & The Cluemeter

Business end view. That's the cell phone flash, not the light itself.
©2017 DW Drang & The Cluemeter

Regulars will recall I had Holster Issues at Ernest Langdon's Tactical Pistol class last October; while it is too soon to say that I, personally, will perform any better at Tom Givens class next month, I certainly should be better off, equipment-wise. (Not blaming the gear for my being behind the power curve, but I made some dubious decisions that resulted in self-induced snake-bite...) My review of the Tom Givens class will certainly include a more detailed gear review, so stay tuned..

I may need to order myself a Hastings in Old Glory for my 1911 Rail Gun w/Surefire U400.

Unless Detroit Holsters offers a custom "Spirit of Detroit" pattern⁴...

***

1. While I hate it when we, as Gun Geeks, start getting all specific about the gat we have, what features or options it has, etc., when buying a holster the specific model and any options, such as a light, matter.
2. This might have been operator error, i.e., not ensuring everything was securely in place, but still...
3. Wilderness Frequent Flyer belt, if anyone is wondering. 
4. The Spirit of Detroit - Wikipedia